FOR 7/25 “NEW INTUITIONS” ON VIEW AT STUDIO MUSEUM HARLEM

AVV/cd set 7/15 #745496

NEW YORK CITY — Three young artists join The Studio Museum in Harlem’s stories tradition with the opening of “New Intuitions,” the 2007-08 Artist-in-Residence exhibition on view through October 26.

Leslie Hewitt, Tanea Richardson and Saya Woolfalk have spent the last year working in the museum’s eponymous studio spaces, and energize its galleries with three markedly different bodies of new work and site-specific installations.

From Hewitt’s play with photography, ephemera and history to Richardson’s surreal sculptural forms to Woolfalk’s utopian tableau, the work in “New Intuitions” is almost disparate, but is linked formally and conceptually. All three artists highlight the importance of process and craft, work with installation and are concerned with language and knowledge formation. Hewitt, Richardson and Woolfalk are also experimentalists, reveling in the process of artmaking as one of discovery and illumination, rather than a means to and end.

The exhibition title, “New Intuitions,” comes from the poet Adrienne Rich quoting Italian thinker Antonio Gramsci. Gramsci posits that culture shifts only when artists’ imaginary and fantastical creations act as a mirror for society. These artists evoke a world that is not at all foreign, but one in which one’s lived experiences are seen anew.

The museum is at 144 West 125th Street. For information, www.studiomuseum.org or 212-864-4500.